New Brunswick is one of the four Atlantic Provinces in Canada. It is the third smallest province. The province is named for the British royal family of Brunswick-Lüneburg. It is called the Loyalist Province. It has a mainland and many islands. The largest and oldest city is Saint John in New Brunswick. Other major cities are Fredericton (the capital city) and Moncton. Many people are of French, British, Scottish and Irish origin. Over 32 percent of the population are Francophones. Other groups include native people, Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians, Italians and Asians. The northern half of the province has cold winters and warm summers. Areas near the sea have milder winters and slightly cooler summers.

New Brunswick is the main producer of lead, zinc, copper, and bismuth in Canada. Gypsum, potash, antimony, silver, gold, natural gas and oil are also mined. There are fishing ports where more than fifty kinds of fish and shellfish are caught (scallops, shrimp, herring, lobsters, snow crabs, mussels, oysters, etc. The main industry is forestry. Paper, newspaper, magazines, tissue, wooden doors and windows are made. There are livestock, dairy, poultry, potato and berry farms. The main crop is potatoes. The Saint John River Valley is called the “Potato Belt.” Apples, blueberries, strawberries, and cranberries are also grown.

Public education in the province is administered by the Department of Education, a department of the Government of New Brunswick. New Brunswick has a comprehensive parallel system of Anglophone and Francophone public schools providing education to both the primary and secondary levels. There are also secular and religious private schools in the province. The New Brunswick Community College system has campuses in all regions of the province. This comprehensive trade school system offers roughly parallel programs in both official languages at either Francophone or Anglophone campuses. There are also a number of private colleges for specialised training in the province, such as the Moncton Flight College, one of the top pilot-training academies in Canada. There are four publicly funded secular universities and four private degree-granting institutions with religious affiliation in the province.

The two comprehensive provincial universities are the University of New Brunswick and the Université de Moncton. These institutions have extensive postgraduate programs and Schools of Law. Medical education programs are currently in development at both the Université de Moncton and at UNBSJ in Saint John. Mount Allison University in Sackville currently ranks as the best liberal arts university in Canada and has produced 48 Rhodes Scholars—more than any other liberal arts university in the Commonwealth and also more than any other university in North America.